Lars P. Syll

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The wisdom of crowds .[embedded content] .[embedded content] If you’d like to learn more on the issue, have a look at James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds (Anchor Books, 2005) or Scott Page’s The Diversity Bonus (Princeton University Press, 2017).

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Svensk skola av idag

It seems reasonable to hope that a successful explanation of wage rigidity would contribute to understanding the extent of the welfare loss associated with unemployment and what can be done to reduce it … Many theories of wage rigidity and unemployment include partial answers to these questions as part of their assumptions, so that the phenomena of real interest are described in the theories’ assumptions. For instance, Lucas concludes that increased unemployment during...

Don’t be trapped by dogma! [embedded content] This one is for all my students. Never give in. Never give up.

How economics has become a religion Economics today has — as we all know — become a “the model is the message” discipline. But as long as it does not seriously argue and assess the compatibility of those models and their real-world target systems, the belief that those models in any essential way enhance our possibilities to understand or explain what happens in our economies, is a belief for which there really is no other ground than belief itself. Even if...

To Thee We Sing [embedded content]

On the use of mathematics in empirical modeling I have argued that in order for a mathematical modeling exercise to illuminate its target the following two conditions must be met:(1*) the objects under investigation must plausibly be stable, modular, and quantitative, with no qualitative differences among instantiations of each type; and (2*) the relations between them must be fixed and law-like throughout the context under study in the modeling exercise …...